Newsweek reports that QAnon supporters were bored and disappointed by Donald Trump’s speech Saturday from Wellington, Ohio. The main problem was apparently the stale material. In France, Marine Le Pen’s fascist National Rally (RN) party has suffered severely disappointing results in the country’s regional elections, owing mainly to record-low voter turnout that disproportionately hurt the far-right. Maybe her material is past its sell-by date, too.
Perhaps there is hope that the fever is breaking. Al Gore is trying to be optimistic, telling CNN:
“I’m hoping that this craziness will fade over time. We hear about ‘AI’ standing for ‘artificial intelligence.’ They’re putting another kind of AI out: artificial insanity. They’re putting out messages that create an alternate reality, and people get into these echo chambers on the internet, and it’s all they hear, and they begin to believe the alternate reality.”
Mitt Romney is acting like the light at the end of the tunnel might not be an oncoming train after all. At least, he thinks telling the truth still might matter.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Sunday said Donald Trump’s ongoing lying that he won the 2020 election is “like WWF,” comparing the former president’s return to rally events with the lurid theatrics of staged wrestling entertainment.
Trump held a rally in Ohio Saturday, during which he again repeated false claims that the presidential election was rigged against him, telling supporters it was “the scam of the century and the crime of the century.”
“I do think it’s important for each person to speak the truth and to make clear that the ‘Big Lie’ is exactly that,” Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if more Republicans should call out those lies.
Whether it’s reading excerpts from Michael Wolff’s new book on what went down inside the White House on January 6 or it’s watching the dustup between Trump, William Barr and Mitch McConnell, it seems clear that there’s some time limit on how long Trump can impose his insanity of the right.
Chris Christie has written “a frank insider’s account of [the 2020] election and the tragic descent of some members of the Republican Party into cowardice and madness” aimed at rescuing the GOP from conspiracy theorists and madmen. The Washington Examiner says the Republicans are all set up for a big comeback just so long as Trump stops talking.
But I’m not convinced that things are about to improve. The Republicans have been convinced for some time that they cannot compete with the Democrats unless Trump’s base turns out, and they’re not going to turn out if he doesn’t tell them to turn out. They’re probably better off relying on redistricting and misinformation to lead them back to majorities than anything else, and no one is better at misinformation than Trump.
There was widespread reporting over the weekend that lawyers for the Trump Organization have been given a Monday deadline to convince New York prosecutors not to drop the hammer, and if that’s true we could soon be seeing the long-awaited next phase of Trump’s career–as a defendant. The U.S. House of Representatives will initiate a Select Committee investigation of the January 6 coup attempt sometime after the July 4 recess, and that also might shake things up a bit.
Still, I think outright boredom might be our best bet. At some point, Trump’s base will lose interest. When they do, the Republicans will see if they can win without him.
Somehow the prospect of a Tom Cotton or a Josh Hawley trying to channel the special style of grievance that Trump so animates in the Republican base seems to almost lend itself to parody. I could be wrong, but what will Trumpism be if Trump was not around? All of the elements will be there, but there could be no central figure who elicits the cultish devotion that Trump does. I have a hard time envisioning the base rallying behind a figure other than Trump. I know they will, but it’s hard to imagine the energy being sufficient to sustain it to the point where it can be nationally significant electoral power. The fights going forward are going to be in the states, where Trumpism is becoming deeply rooted in law and in legislative practices. Until Dems win in those states, the demon that is Trumpism will continue to exact a terrifying toll.
The previous cult figure was Reagan. Then it was W, who was more like a conventional politician. Then Trump. I understand why people are looking towards Tucker Carlson. It may be another W Bush figure – a dim-witted yet more or less conventional politician. But it’s more likely to be some media figure out of right field. That banjo guy from Mumford and Sons doesn’t have the fire power to turn his 15 seconds of Fame into a career, but it could be someone of that background.
When Trump is not on the ballot the WWC supercharged turnout is down, and the electorate skews more educated. How do Republicans win in that scenario? Only by retaking the suburbs. Given their coddling of Q and MTG I see no signs that they’re abandoning Trumpism even if they end up having to ditch Trump because he gets locked up. The problem for them is the party doesn’t have any values anymore. They don’t really have a solid base of policy ideas, and are entirely run by cultural grievances. But the suburban voters won’t buy into that, and it will be curtains soon. The only play is to hold onto Trump and try to subvert the will of the people by overruling local election officials to state their candidate as the winner, this leading to potential civil war. We are living in a very dangerous time period.
The problem as I see it is in the subtitle of Christie’s book: saving the Party from Biden’s policies, which happen to be popular, and replace them with what? Republicans have no answers for any of our problems. They have been wrong about everything, my entire life. When Republicans disagree with Democrats they’re wrong, and when Republicans agree with Democrats they’re both wrong.
“When Trumpism Gets Boring Enough, the Movement Will Die”.
I’ll go with that.
So, all the fascists have to do is keep their right-wing authoritarian enablers engaged and not bored, and they’ll be alright.
Guess what the fascists are going to do?